a16z Podcast

a16z Podcast: Ecommerce and the Holiday Shopping Collision

Jeff Jordan

Posted November 21, 2014

 

For ecommerce companies last year’s holiday shopping season was a collision of “expectation and reality”: Consumers’ expectation that they could safely order things two days before Christmas, and the reality that shipping companies simply couldn’t handle the massive volume. a16z General Partner Jeff Jordan (who formerly oversaw ebay.com; is currently on the board of Pinterest and also oversees a16z investments in Instacart, Julep, Walker & Company, and Zulily) offers his thoughts on the changes being wrought by and around ecommerce.

How can ecommerce companies deal with the conflicting expectations and realities of an on-demand economy? How can they compete with ecommerce giant Amazon, which just gets bigger every year? And given all this, how is physical retail faring?